The Calgary Flames have been forced to go the buyout route a few times recently. A buyout kind of gets you out of trouble with bad contracts, but it isn’t necessarily a get out of jail free card. You do pay less, and it is spread out over a longer period of time so it makes the player’s cap hit a little easier to devour.
In general, the calculation of a buyout is, a team pays two-thirds of the player’s remaining money, but it is spread out over twice the actual length.
So, if a player is supposed to make $6 million for each of the next two seasons, he would be owed a total of $12 million.